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Soyuz rocket launches a military payload In the early hours of April 17, 2026, a Soyuz-2-1b rocket lifted off from the Plesetsk military launch site with a classified cargo for the Ministry of Defense.
Soyuz rocket launch on April 17, 2026, at a glance:
Around April 10, 2026, Russian authorities issued multiple warnings to air and sea traffic about upcoming rocket launches: one on April 13 and April 29, with launch windows between 21:00 and 23:59 UTC, and another between April 14 and April 30, with an unusually long window between 00:00 and 16:00. As noted by a space historian Bart Hendrickx, the announced danger zones matched known impact sites for the payload fairing of the Angara-1.2 rocket and for the second stage of the Soyuz-2 rocket, either indicating parallel launch campaigns for two vehicles based in Plesetsk or intentionally creating a confusion as a countermeasure against a potential attempt by Ukrainian forces to strike a fueled rocket on the launch pad. According to the statement by the Russian Ministry of Defense, distributed by the official Russian media around 03:00 Moscow Time on April 17, 2026, the Soyuz-2-1b rocket lifted off as planned with multiple spacecraft for the Ministry of Defense. Soon after 02:30 Moscow Time, multiple sightings of what appeared like a rocket ascent was reported in Finland. Around 09:30 Moscow Time, the Ministry of Defense reported that the launch at 02:17 Moscow Time was a success and the spacecraft were successfully delivered into their orbits. The published visuals of the launch revealed a Soyuz rocket with a payload fairing typically used in a combination with the Volga upper stage, however no warning had ever been issued for any area of the ocean normally used for deorbiting of a space tug.  The expected ground track of the ascent trajectory for Soyuz rocket during launch in April 2026. The US Space Force initally catalogued a single object associated with the launch in a 457 by 547-kilometer orbir with an inclination 98.33 degrees toward the Equator. A few hours later a total of three objects were tracked:
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